


the ceremony of innocence

by TolkienGirl



Series: All That Glitters Gold Rush!AU: The Full Series [121]
Category: The Silmarillion and other histories of Middle-Earth - J. R. R. Tolkien
Genre: A Resolution to various Things, Dark, Gen, Non-Linear Narrative, POV First Person, Post-Chapter 10 of Within the Hollow Crown, Power Dynamics, Quotations from the Book of Revelation, Violence, title from Yeats
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-08-22
Updated: 2019-08-22
Packaged: 2020-10-01 17:09:46
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,536
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/20346289
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/TolkienGirl/pseuds/TolkienGirl
Summary: Do you not understand? Death should not surprise me.





	the ceremony of innocence

“Rumil,” says the man called Edwards, “is dead.”

Death should not surprise Maglor, son of Feanor, brother of Maedhros and Amrod, any longer. Yet, I am surprised, if the pulse pounding in my ears is any indication. The man is speaking to Ulfang, not to me. I am not a leader here, because I did not know what steps a leader would take.

I am not a leader because Maedhros did not make me one.

Maedhros, the reason I know what a leader looks like.

_“Then I saw a new heaven and a new earth. The former heaven and the former earth had passed away, and the sea was no more.”_

_We are standing in Grandfather Finwe’s pew, but he is not beside us. The casket that holds him is black as ebony. I remember fairytales, and how ebony is always used, in them, to signify power and cold beauty. I do not think my grandfather was either of these things._

_My brother beside me—the only brother I take willingly to my charge—is shaking like a leaf._

_I touch his arm. _

_“Maedhros,”_ _I do not say. “Maitimo. I think I can be braver.”_

_I think this because my whole heart, my whole mind, were designed to understand the contours of death, no matter how they ruined me._

I was angry with him, at the time—the last feeling I gave him, the last heartstring I played in song of our lives. If I had only known, that he would not return. If I had only known that he could not do all things.

Ulfang was gone three days this week, and Celegorm says we ought not to trust his story as to where he went.

“Why should he go and try to treat with Thingol of Doriath again? Rumil couldn’t. Athair was his enemy. His recent messenger, we ran off.”

“_You_ ran him off,” Caranthir mutters.

“_You_ fuck off,” Celegorm retorts.

“Ulfang is a lying serpent,” Curufin agrees, eyes sharp. He does not say why.

_“He will wipe every tear from their eyes, and there shall be no more death or mourning, wailing or pain, for the old order has passed away.”_

Do you not understand? Death should not surprise me.

My brothers will not grieve for Rumil, I think; save, perhaps, for Caranthir, who often sat by his bedside without justifying his loyalty. I was not—close to him. To Rumil. By my memory, Maedhros and Amrod spoke to him most. Perhaps that doomed him.

Perhaps they were all, good souls, doomed.

How can I think their names as often as I do, when each syllable is a hot brand against the tender skin of my grief?

Ask rather _how can I not?_

_Maedhros, I will never sing again. My voice goes with you. Do you hear me? Does your soul hear mine, if we have them still?_

It is not a poet’s duty to tell everything that happened. That is the role of a historian. To tell everything that _might_ explain the past is the role of a philosopher, and philosophy looks also towards the future. I am neither of these things.

I am scarcely even a poet, now, as the walls of Mithrim close around my brothers, as the walls of my brothers close around me.

I _am_ all a-panic when Celegorm, leaning close but not touching me (he does not touch me, these days, unless he must), whispers, _Poison, Maglor. Come and see._

_Poison? It cannot be, the man was already—_

_His lips are stained. See here? And here? Nightshade. The berries are green, deadly. Rumil was breathing when I saw him last._

_You—visited him?_

_I watch everything. I want to know what will be killed next. And you see? _

It is not a poet’s duty—_I am a brother, and a bad one at that._

_I saw him,_ Amras whispers, ghost-like, fingers viced around my arm. _Mollie and I saw him. Leaving Rumil’s room._

_Who?_

“You are a traitor.” I speak quietly, as if I am not afraid. As if I am not trying to call for aid, in this trap I laid for myself as well as him. “I—”

“You believe the word of a common whore, and a child above mine?”

“I believe my brother.”

There is a long pause. The maps on the wall are serpentine with rivers. I can almost hear the slither of Ulfang’s thoughts. Who is this man? I do not know him. I have no talent for knowing people who are not my own. I came west with my family, and half of them are gone. I trusted Rumil, and Rumil lies dead.

This is his study, where I bade Ulfang come. This is the heart of the matter; a rotten heart.

Where is Celegorm, who saw the trace of nightshade on Rumil’s lips? Where is Amras, who ran to me and shook my arm in wordless fright, before he recovered himself and told me what he had seen?

They know him, better than I do.

I do not know this man.

“Funny you should say that,” he drawls, humorless. “Funny you should talk ‘bout believing a brother.”

There is a spot of fire in my heart—there is, very nearly, _all_ of my heart—that burns for Maedhros. It ignites now, as if it recognizes, before the rest of me does, that _he_ is the brother spoken of.

“How dare you bring him into this,” I cry.

_“The victor_ _ will inherit these gifts, and I shall be his God.”_

He is between me and the door. _Come and speak with me,_ I said, luring him away as Mollie slipped out behind me. Yes: I came between the two of them, in the dark hall where no man nor woman walks at night, sleeping as they are in their quarters. Why was Mollie there? Would he have killed her? And if he would, as I suspected, will he kill me?

I have only a knife.

_A traitor, a traitor, and perhaps worse._

(Where is Celegorm? Maedhros left Celegorm to protect me.)

“Didn’t they send you terms, son?”

“You know nothing.”

“Whore tries to wriggle her way out of being caught with her hands dirty.”

I narrow my eyes. My heart is leaping viciously. “She had no reason to kill Rumil. She’s only a girl.”

“So you think I _was_ cornering her over poor Rumil? Awful lot of ideas you have there. No wonder you’re suspicious.”

_He thinks you are afraid._

I choke back a sob. I have not heard Maedhros’s voice in a long time.

_I am afraid, Maitimo. I am._

_Oh, Macalaure. What am I always telling you? Courage is not a feeling. It is not something you can always hold. Merely reach it for it, brother._

“You were leaving Rumil’s room the night he died. There are traces of nightshade at the corners of his lips. Was he going to wake up, Ulfang? Is that why you—”

He rolls his neck. “Celegorm killed him.”

“What?”

“I saw _him_ leaving the room. I went to see what he was about there, in the middle of the night. Saw nothin’. Left.” The man even has the gall to stroke his beard with one, contemplative hand. “But he’d know nightshade, wouldn’t he? He would.”

Athair brought all of us into this room, when we first arrived at Mithrim, and I hated it. I even hated Athair, as if he would ever be gone, leaving me alone with the heart I’d made for myself.

“You’re a liar. But I knew that.”

“Your brother didn’t.”

There’s something glittering in his eyes. I’ve seen it before; the look a man has when he wants to kill something cruelly. That southerner—Gothmog—had it so long ago, far in the east, when he raised his pistol to shoot.

I want my mother, and my father, and my littlest brother.

I want Maedhros more than any of them.

_Maedhros._

(Why does he keep speaking of Maedhros?)

“I have not fought you,” I say thinly.

“You’re fighting me now.”

“I’m asking questions.” The knife is hard at my hip, a line straight to the center of the earth.

“Strange you chose this room. The only one left.” Ulfang grins under his beard. I don’t know quite what he means, though this room is indeed our refuge. Why did I choose it? Would the ghosts I gather round me keep me safe? “You’re the only one left, Maglor. Goodbye.”

He turns. His hand is on the door. I think he is about to open it, but instead I hear the bolt slide into place.

_Celegorm killed him._

That is the cruel death he chooses.

_“But as for cowards, the unfaithful, the depraved, murderers, the unchaste, sorcerers, idol-worshipers, and deceivers of every sort, their lot is in the burning pool of fire and sulfur, which is the second death.”_

The back of my head aches. My eyes sting too. Am I bleeding? There is no knife held to my throat.

_Celegorm killed—her, Maitimo’s tormenter, the woman who wounded and defiled him, by slitting her throat._

That was the end of our world.

“This is not how I wanted to manage our business,” Ulfang says, sighing. His beard is almost scraping my chin. I struggle beneath him. He is stronger than me. I should have taken that into better account, when I lunged.

_But—why does he keep speaking of Maedhros?_

“You—_cur_,” I say, speaking with some Athair’s dead grandeur. “Mollie saw you, didn’t she? You were going to silence her. All because you could not have Rumil wake and reclaim the fort from your hands. What have you been hiding? You have been skulking about making yourself king in his absence.”

“There’s Feanor’s tongue.” Ulfang shrugs, not moving his hands, which are clamped about my wrists. “I must confess—I never liked it.”

_What do I know? Not enough. Did I lure him to a confrontation that was not deserved? Did I strike at a man who meant me no ill?_

_Maedhros trusted him…_

_Maedhros is dead._

“You’re a weakling, he said. Weakest of ‘em all.” Ulfang grins. I can see his sympathy spilling about between his yellow teeth. How I hate him! _This_ is hatred. And I may not know death as well as I thought I would, but I know this.

_Ulfang is a lying serpent_, whispers Curufin, in my ear, a boost of strength almost equal to Maedhros’s voice a few moments ago. A boost of poison.

Ulfang tells me that I will die by my own hand tonight, and I scarcely hear him. Ulfang tells me that only Celegorm will defend me, and he a murderer soon brought low. It scarcely matters that he proves me right, proves Curufin right, proves Maedhros wrong.

When he shifts my left wrist to be pinned with my right, I twist beneath him violently, striking an elbow to the soft part of his belly.

My head hurts, my eyes sting. I am on my feet; I have my knife in my hand.

Ulfang’s eyes flare. “You call for your brothers all you like,” he hisses. “I bolted that door, and I know you have the key. They don’t.”

_Macalaure, if you don’t hold the knife just so, you’ll never learn—_

_I was made for music, Maitimo. Not for…_

_Such violent ends as I was?_

_Such_

_violent_

_ends._

It is so much easier to stab a man than I thought it would be.

(I do not know this man, this man with a knife in his hand, who moved with dancer grace and feral quickness, to strike a blow for—

I do not know myself.)

Ulfang is staring at his belly. So am I. The dark blood, spreading. Ink on maps, and mud on the flanks of horses.

The first time I killed a man, I thought it would change me forever, would make me unable to ever enjoy another day. To taste and see and listen as I had before, as I had when I was young. Am I young?

Instead, killing a man made the same act—natural, even if it was in self-defense, this time.

“You die by _my_ hand,” I say. _Son of Feanor, Grandson of Finwe, Brother of Maedhros—_

“Maedhros,” says Ulfang, with a hideous smile. His face is white as milk. He has slumped to his knees. I wonder how much it hurts, or if it is only hot and shocking, to have one’s life draining away.

It _is _his life. I bit him deep.

“What?” My hand is not shaking. Nor is my voice.

_Would you know me, Maitimo? Would you know the brother you left?_

“I saw him.”

I am still thinking of other things, and of nothing at all. I am thinking of Maedhros, yes, but also I begin to consider—what will Ulfang’s men do to find Ulfang here? Am I the author of Celegorm’s murder, of Curufin’s murder? Will they cut down gentler Caranthir and Amras too, after a horde of men kill_ me_?

I have more of Athair’s blood in me than I thought: I do not quail. _Fight_, I whisper to myself, in my own voice, and none other’s. _We will fight. _

“You saw him?” I parrot the words, without taking their meaning. _Fight, Kanafinwe._

“Not a week hence.”

_“He was hurled to the earth, and his angels with him.”_

If I were Amras or Caranthir, I do not think that I would have the strength to stand. If I were Curufin, I should not have come here at all. And if I were Celegorm, I would be cutting Ulfang’s flesh to ribbons, tearing out his tongue before he could answer any of my questions.

But I am Maglor, man or not, poet or not. Alone with all my dead.

“What?” I gasp, brandishing the knife. Ulfang is dying; he wants a cruel death, even if it is not mine or my brothers’. “Maedhros is _dead_. You lie.”

Maedhros is dead because I killed him. My beautiful brother, who was made more a martyr than a murderer by all his sins—

My brother lies in any number of ravines, and haunts any number of memories.

But only that.

Dear…God…

_—only—_

“Bauglir didn’t kill him,” Ulfang says. The fact that he knows that name and speaks it freely—

I cry out. More than that: it is a scream that leaves me, a life-force spent.

When I know my knife again, it is buried almost to the man’s spine.

“A slave,” he wheezes. Blood is frothing at his lips. “I saw him tied down and beaten, begging like a dog. Your—your _Maitimo_—”

I twist the blade. I do not pray; I do not ask forgiveness for the ire that burns through me.

“_You are lying._”

His eyes are flickering, not flaring. This is—_going out_. Death should not surprise me.

I wait.

“Said…he said…_Ulfang, they are only…boys_.” He doesn’t grin that terrible grin, doesn’t do much more than stiffen. He says, “Didn’t know, did he?”

And he dies like that, in my arms, the way my brother could not, because—

My brother lives.


End file.
